Tim DeChristopher’s 12-minute appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman where he talked about climate activism and Bidder 70 — the documentary that features him — was longer than any single cable news network gave President Obama’s speech (save the Weather Channel).

For those not familiar, DeChristopher was released from the federal prison system in April. The reason he was in it in the first place is because he wanted to draw attention to the fact that the federal government was offering up our public lands on the cheap, and it was being scooped up by fossil fuel interests.

So in 2008, he went to an auction usually attended by members of oil and gas industry, and started bidding. And winning the bids. And eventually he just kept his #70 bidding card held up. And he won 22,500 acres of public lands.

This drew some attention so he was escorted out of the room by law enforcement, who asked him what was going on. He said “I’m trying to stop this auction in any way I can because I think it’s a threat to my future and a fraud against the American people.” He confirmed he did not plan on paying for the parcels and after a long legal battle, ended up in prison for two years.

One thing the jury was not allowed to know as they decided his fate was that the auction in question was actually illegal, something that would seem pertinent to his case.

When he got out of prison, he received a job offer to work for the First Unitarian Church, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons told him he could not do that because it “involved social justice.”

DeChristopher explains this whole absurd story to a rapt audience in David Letterman’s studio — it’s worth watching:

DeChristopher’s explanation of what happened to him makes his experience meaningful. Toward the end, Letterman expressed some serious doubt that anything could be done about climate change, saying “we’re at a point now where we know change is not coming, and it’s now all about adaptability.”

DeChristopher acknowledged that there is a certain amount of carbon pollution already emitted that makes future climate change catastrophic. “But I think it’s important to stop and think about what it means to be too late,” he said. DeChristopher made the case that the period of change that humanity faces is critical and that makes activism even more important because it matters “who’s driving the ship.”

“Going down that road with an ignorant, apathetic citizenry that’s afraid of their own government and feels like corporations can write all the rules — that’s when things can be pretty ugly, pretty scary.”

President Obama’s speech aired a few hours before Letterman would tape on Tuesday, so it’s not clear if either of them had heard about the things he proposed to do to address climate change.

Letterman finished the segment saying: “This gentleman has done us all a favor. Tim DeChristopher, thank you very much.”

You have to be careful making ‘jokes’ on this sort of set-up. If I’d been there in person, you could have told that I was joking by the severe twitching of the left side of my face, that always accompanies my attempts at ‘humour’. I’m told that it is quite…..distinctive.

Kudos to Tim DeChristopher! I wrote him a letter of thanks while he was so unjustly incarcerated in Herlong. I hope to be able to see the Bidder 70 movie some time.
And David Letterman deserves praise too. If I recall correctly he’s had Bill McKibben on the show.

Yes, David Letterman absolutely deserves praise too. Over the past several years he’s had more than a view great guests speaking about climate change, and during that time Dave himself has been the ONLY person with a large TV audience who talks about climate change in a serious way.

It was great to see that on television. I like Tim DeChristopher. One thing though. He said it’s entirely too late to avoid the worst kind of global warming and that’s not true. No climate science team says that. They say that fast action can still give us a “lesser bad” version in our future. I don’t want Tim’s message to unnecessarily discourage others.

“He said it’s entirely too late to avoid the worst kind of global warming and that’s not true.” The ‘action’ required is seven billion citizens of this planet spending all their waking hours working collectively to avoid the cliff (aside from time necessary to supply minimal needs). Given that 6.99 billion of those citizens are focused on self-indulgence in the here-and-now, or are aspiring to it, how is it possible to close that gap?

Given the US ‘justice’ system’s penchant for draconian sentences and solitary confinement, DeChristopher got off lightly. The next trouble-maker might be made more of an example of. DeChristopher is a brave and rational man, and active non-violent resistance is, I believe, the way to go. Hit the swine in the only place it hurts-their wallets.

It really irks me that he went to jail for not paying. And since the parcels probably added up to under $200K, then Letterman could’ve purchased those mineral rights for the cost of one show. And since Tim didn’t pay then the parcels were auctioned off again and now have geo surveyors driving all over them in atvs prospecting. Who got the last laugh?

When I originally heard this story I thought Tim was actually paying for the parcels, like adopting an acre of rainforest, since the rights were so cheap. But he ended up surrendering the bids, so not only did he go to jail, the land ended up legally in the hands of Shell and Exxonmobil. He should’ve only bid on the land he could pay for. It’s the same symbolic gesture but with better results.

He had no plan going in and disrupted only his own life. Is it any wonder why this strategy won’t work? Future activists have to be interested in more than mere pranks. Ask yourself how you are truly going to outsmart Shell and Conocophillips. What kind of action will it take for this stock to trade at $0?

ConocoPhillips
NYSE: COP – Jun 28 4:01pm ET
60.50+0.16‎ (0.27%‎)

To paraphrase Patton: “the idea isn’t to die for your country, it’s to make the other guy die for his country.”

If the auction was illegal and the only guy who goes to jail is the activist then something is wrong. Don’t play poker against a cheating house.

You might want to check your facts before spouting off. The afternoon of the auction, Tim’s church friends had a $43,000 down payment at the BLM office. It was refused.

The auction and the one before were rescinded when Ken Salazar took over as Secretary of Interior. In February of this year, most of the land in those auctions was permanently removed from auction consideration.

Hansen discussed what too late could mean in his book Storms of My Grandchildren, and in his Bjerknes Lecture at the 2008 AGU. He doesn’t have a model that predicts it, (he said his model “blows up” before things proceed this far), but he says he believes if all the fossil fuels are burned the risk is all life is extinguished on the only planet known to support life. The book presents the most fleshed out version of his argument.